Dysfunctional is the New 'Normal'

Michael Grief's 'Next to Normal,' winner of 3 Tony awards and a Pulitzer, provides consumers of New York with a pleasantly refreshing alternative to Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and the other traditional lions of Broadway. This reviewer was advised NOT to read a review or a synopsis of the play (someone must have told him that I 'cheat' by reading the synopses of Operas beforehand), and I would in turn advise the same.

Wow! Is this play shocking! Next to Normal is not your run-of-the-mill "boy-gets-girl," "girl-falls-in-love-with-monster,' 'girl-escapes-poverty-and-overcomes-social-barriers-to-fall-in-love-with-student-in-pre-revolutionary-France,' 'American-soldier-gets-Vietnamese-peasant-pregnant' love story that historically defines Broadway musicals in the past. In fact, its not really much of a story. It's a scathing indictment of the traditional "looks good on the surface" family structure--the type of family that we all used to know or still do. You know, the Cleaver-ish family who lived three houses down who seemingly had it all figured out, but beneath the surface, les démons du sommeil!!!

Next to Normal begins with quotidian travails of a family of four: a detached father who cannot emotive, a hysterical mother toiling to keep the house together, a teenage son crashing the gates of manhood, and an awkward daughter struggling to fend off her pot-smoking suitors with her AP chemistry textbook. Sure, the mother goes to a little therapy. Sure, her shrink gives her few pills. Sure, the father takes just enough care of her in between conference calls at the office. But something is terribly amiss here. The audience discovers that this family is more than just long overdue for a family vacation.

Next to Normal has one of the most innovative sets I have seen in my nascent theater-going career. Rather than having the orchestra play in between the crowd and the action--an arrangement that only adds to the distance between the two--this set places the band IN THE SET. The Set resembles a stainless steel house cut in half, kinda like taking a chainsaw to your little sister's dollhouse so you can see whats going on. Each band member occupies a separate 'room' in the house, and while I am not sure what this does for the acoustics of the play (since this reviewer will be getting cochlear implants in a few short years), it allows the crowd to be closer to the action. Plus the set designer gets muchas felicitaciones for ingenuity.

Tom Kitt's world-class musical score does not disappoint. the music is more modern and contemporary (duh.....the band has an electric bass, electric guitar, a synthesizer, and drum-machine). The music haunts and depresses when the play turns dark. It vivifies when the story ascends. I would not describe the music as "catchy" or "gripping," for they don't necessarily stick in your head for days, as some of the Les Miz songs might be. But the score compliments the acting and the screenplay in the same way that Garden State's soundtrack did with the movie: accentuating and catalyzing without overtaking the actors and drowning the crowd.

This reviewer has a soft spot for the supporting role, and predictably this reviewer enjoyed the actor who portrays the multiple psychiatrists who the mother consults. He slips seamlessly between the boring, prescription-wielding shrink to the faith-healing, almost-evangelical hipster therapist. His singing voice was easily the best of the bunch.

On the contrary, the teenage son was slightly off-key. And while the story is meant to highlight the complex and intimate relationship between himself and his mother, the Oedipus -like infatuation seems a bit creepy and repulsive. As the artist intends, they say.

The Passing Scene Cafe urges its patrons to see Next to Normal before the sputtering Broadway
economy claims yet another victim. But BUYER BEWARE!!! Come to the cafe and have an extra strong latte, a tasty danish, and make sure you are in a good before you see it. You won't be disappointed!

Note to M.D's: Your Labor/Leisure Calculus is Wrong!!!

So says Peter Orszag, the left-leaning economist who served most recently as the head economist for the Congressional Budget Office and as Obama's director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

I would prefer not to get into Mr. Orszag's record at his two posts. As the head of O.M.B, his job was decidedly more political and mostly consisted of selling--or spinning---the health care reform efforts by Obama and the Democrats and its putative effects on the long-term fiscal picture of the US economy. He ended up being the first member of Obama's cerebral economic team to leave his job, and he was last seen on the pages of the New York Times arguing for an extension of George Bush's tax rates.

Being a newly minted hospital administrator, I decided to give Mr. Orszag's columns a look this evening. He writes an article entitled "Health Care's Lost Weekend," a cheerful overture to doctors and how they need to about their work schedules and consent to some oversight of their work.

The article mentions New York University's Langone Medical Center as a case study for the first idea.

"First, weekends. It’s never good to be hospitalized, but you really don’t want to be hospitalized on a weekend. There are fewer doctors around, and people admitted on Saturdays and Sundays fare relatively poorly.

One study in 2007 found, for example, that for every 1,000 patients suffering heart attacks who were admitted to a hospital on a weekend, there were 9 to 10 more deaths than in a comparable group of patients admitted on a weekday. The weekend patients were less likely to quickly receive the invasive procedures they needed — like coronary artery bypass grafts or cardiac catheterization"

I can't really quarrel with the numbers in the study. I would like to see these numbers replicated a few more times in other hospitals, but let's assume they are right.

"And then there are the economics of a $750 billion-a-year industry letting its capacity sit idle a quarter or more of the time. If hospitals were in constant use, costs would fall as expensive assets like operating rooms and imaging equipment were used more fully. And if the workflow at existing hospitals was spread more evenly over the entire week, patients could more often enjoy the privacy of single-bed rooms"

The first response I have to this article is: how much is the hospital really closed on weekends? After reading this article I had the impression that hospitals would have a big "CLOSED" sign on the front with the doors locked, the lights out, and no one but the weekend security guard on the premises. That was not my impression of hospitals growing up in the home of a neurosurgeon, whose weekend rounds and emergency cases seemed to have no discernible monday-thru-friday regimen.

But why would a $750 billion/yr sit idle on the sidelines on weekends if it could be put to better use 7 days a week? Why have decades worth of hospital CEOs, administrators, and department chiefs not thought of this idea before.

Hospital resources sit idle on weekends because its a cost-effective way of keeping the hospital services flowing. Mr. Orszag does not say how much more it would cost to keep the hospital open on weekends. He makes the incorrect assumption that the marginal cost of hospitals being open on weekend would be zero, or negative. Wouldn't you have to pay for people to work there? Nurses? Scrub nurses? back office staff? electricity? Pathology? Maintenance for instruments?

Or do all those employees work for free on weekends?

Also, Mr. Orszag discusses the reduce health outcomes for patients admitted on weekends, a fact which may be true. But what about having doctors work 6 or seven days a week? Same thing with PAs and nurses?

What effect would keeping the hospitals open on weekends have on the staffs' family lives? Social lives? Morale. Mr. Orszag does not say. Having doctors, residents, and physician assistants on call while spending time at home is a great way to use their leisure time wisely.

My point is not to hand down a harsh verdict on this column. I think his analysis is incomplete, yet the Passing Scene Cafe anxiously awaits a follow-up to this.

Resurrection

Hello everyone,

I am very sorry for being absent for the last few months. I have been busy doing a "gut-rehab" of my life---period which entailed a career change and a residence change.

The Passing Scene Cafe will now be hosted from the Upper West Side, with a sister cafe in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. I am now the Neurosurgery coordinator at Coney Island Hospital. I run a staff of five neurosurgeons and roughly 10 neurosurgical PAs. I truly have the pleasure to work with some incredibly talented and driven individuals, and they have forgotten, or have chosen to to ignore---for the time being---that I really have no qualifications for this job.

BUT!!!!!!! I have always wanted to be on the front lines in the health care system. Sitting on my cozy perch, reading journals and magazines, and ranting against politicians who don't know the slightest thing about consumers and producers is one thing. Now I get to put my ideas where my mouth is...or stethoscope is....or....you get the idea.

Anyways, I am excited to start writing again. I will try my hardest to be not as one-dimensional as I was during the spring, i.e. focusing too much on politics, because I have had the fortune and misfortune of dealing with some pretty interesting questions in my brief time here. I will try to write about them whenever I can.

In the meantime, I keep both a tumblr page and a twitter page. Please visit and comment!!!

Good to be back!

Take America Back Youtube Video

Evidently, liberals are trying to purge this from Youtube.com. So much for free speech.

Senator Robert Bennett of Utah, Republican

What does his loss mean in the Utah Republican Primary?

"Senator Robert Bennett and the Story of 2010"

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:25 AM

The Monday morning column from Clark Judge:

Senator Robert Bennett and the Story of 2010
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc. (www.whwg.com ) and chairman, Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org)

Over the weekend, Washington received the first of what are likely to be many wake up calls in advance of the November elections. The Utah Republican Party convention declined to re-nominate three-term U.S. senator Robert Bennett. It didn’t give him even enough votes to qualify for a place on the party’s primary ballot.

The Mainstream Media reported this amazing turn of events as the work of the Tea Party movement. And it is true that former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, which has taken up the Tea Party banner, was a presence at the convention, as was another champion of fiscal conservatism, the Club for Growth.

But the Tea Party is more than a couple of advocacy groups and its significance extends beyond turnout at a few rallies. It goes beyond those who would ever consider joining with the Tea Partiers. To see what I mean, consider this apparently arcane question: Why did George W. Bush win in 2000?

Forget about Florida, hanging chads, and Supreme Court rulings. How was it that Bush got close enough to a majority of the Electoral College to open the gates for that circus to parade though town? The country was at peace; the economy appeared strong; the Federal budget was in surplus. In other words, all the fundamentals said, don’t rock the national boat.

Yes, thanks to Monica and her West Wing romp, there was a general disgust with the Clinton Administration. We all heard the stories, and, after hearing them, we all wanted to take a shower.

But Al Gore wasn’t Bill Clinton. The only woman he was known to kiss with any passion was his wife – a point the two of them made much too graphically on the Democratic convention stage the night he accepted the party’s nomination.

Yet Gore wasn’t Clinton in another, more critical and politically fatal respect. Clinton had run as a centrist and, thanks more to the Gingrich Congress than to his own initiative, had delivered a centrist government. In retrospect, this meant, especially, that he had delivered budget surpluses. “People v the Powerful” Gore ran against that legacy.

So in the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush was promising more of what the American people wanted to continue of the Clinton years. With the GOP having gone to the government shutdown mat over excessive Federal spending in 1995 and with the budget surpluses that followed several years after they took charge, a majority of the public – in particular swing voters -- trusted Republicans to deliver restrain of government and growth of the economy if put 100 percent in charge.

It is not too much to say that the Washington-based political establishment has misunderstood the last three presidential elections. The 2000 outcome was for continuity with course correction, not major change. The 2004 election went to the candidate who was more faithful to that agenda, with slack cut him because of 9/11. In 2006 patience ran out with the GOP’s profligacy, and in 2008 this same electoral majority wanted to teach the GOP a lesson it wouldn’t forget.

They still do.

You can’t put together a winning campaign with just the people who have shown up a Tea Party rallies. Impressive as those gatherings have been, when it comes to the numbers needed to prevail in elections, the rallies have been little more than media events. The key to their power is that they reflect a much broader body of opinion. That opinion is once more disgusted by the Democrats, this time by their spending, not their cavorting.

But as the GOP is their last best hope, they are not prepared to embrace GOP candidates who will once more dash those hopes. Senator Bennett voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He looked all too ready to embrace a budget-busting healthcare bill, even if it was not the bill the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put forward. He did not seem ready to assert the proper limits of Federal power. And so he lost.

This is not just the story of Robert Bennett. In a different way is also the story of Charlie Crist in Florida. It looks as though it will be played out in Kentucky very soon. Elements of it can be detected in the Indiana primary vote. The swing vote in American politics is looking for a Congressional majority that will return the national to a government of limits – limits in spending and equally important limits in power. This is the story we are seeing played out in 2010.

The Goldman Sachs Hearings

I wholeheartedly agree with the boys at PowerlineBlog.Com.

1) There was no scandal. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking a short position in a market...whether it is a directional bet, or especially to hedge a 'long' position in the mortgage market.

2) Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich) should be nowhere near a committee of finance or economics, let alone chair one.

Demonizing Goldman Sachs

I've now read most, although not all, of today's proceedings before the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations at which a number of Goldman Sachs employees testified. The proceedings were revealing in many ways. Here are some thoughts, more or less at random:

1) This was one of the rare Congressional hearings where it isn't easy to tell the Democratic questioners from the Republicans. There is no political percentage in sticking up for Goldman Sachs, and I'm tempted not to do it either, since they have been a major supporter of the Democratic Party for some time, and currently are, I believe, lobbying in favor of the Democrats' "regulatory reform" legislation. But, what the heck: we call them as we see them.

2) Questioning by the Senators was, as usual, ineffective. Mostly, they tried to cross-examine the Goldman employees based on emails that the government has obtained via subpoena. The process was painful due to the Senators' lack of skill. It's also probably true that the Goldman folks didn't say quite everything that they knew. But, as one who spends much of his life poring over emails and other documents, looking for evidence I can use in depositions, I can say authoritatively that the Goldman emails aren't bad. This is a relatively tame collection on which to try to hang some sort of scandal.

3) Today's inquisition was a sideshow. Here is what really happened: there was a bubble in housing prices. The bubble was mostly the result of government policy--loose money, combined with pressure on banks to make bad loans to unqualified home buyers. It all worked for a while because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under the leadership of Congressman Barney Frank and others, created a secondary market for shaky mortgages. Goldman Sachs participated in this market, downstream, along with many other players. But the whole thing wasn't an accident or a conspiracy, it was government policy. The home price bubble could have only one possible result. All bubbles burst--there is nothing else they can do--and the bursting of a bubble is always painful. The whole disaster that began in 2008 was the inevitable result of government policy, which is why Senators are so anxious to pass the buck to Goldman Sachs.

4) The Senators, seemingly without exception, are embarrassingly ignorant of modern risk management techniques. They really don't seem to understand how and why firms like Goldman Sachs hedge their exposure to various economic trends. The most coherent explanation of what Goldman did came from the firm's Chief Financial Officer, David Viniar:

I'd like to give you a sense for how we managed our risk during the period leading up to the crisis.

Through the end of 2006, we were generally long in exposure to residential mortgages and mortgage-related products. In that December, however, we began to experience a pattern of daily losses in our mortgage-related P&L. P&L can itself be a very valuable risk metric, and I personally read it every day.

I called a meeting to discuss the situation with the key people involved in running the mortgage business. We went through our positions and debated views on the mortgage market in considerable detail.

While we came to no definitive conclusion about how the overall market would develop in the future, we became collectively concerned about the higher volatility and recent price declines in our subprime mortgage-related positions. As a result, we decided to attempt to reduce our exposure to these positions. We wanted to get "closer to home."

We proceeded to sell certain positions outright and hedge our long positions in an attempt to achieve these results. As always, the clients who bought our long positions or other similar positions had a view that they were attractive positions to purchase at the price they were offered. As with our own views, their views sometimes proved to be correct and sometimes incorrect.

We continued to reduce our positions in these products over the course of 2007. We were generally successful in reducing this exposure to the extent that on occasion our portfolio traded short. When that happened, even if these short positions were profitable, given the ongoing high volatility and uncertainty in the market, we tended to attempt to then reduce these short positions to again get closer to home.

This situation reversed itself in 2008, however, when the portfolio tended to trade long. And as a result, despite the fact that our franchise enabled the firm to be profitable overall, we lost money on residential mortgage-related products in that year.

While the tremendous volatility in the mortgage market caused periodic large losses on long positions and large gains on offsetting short positions, the net of which could have appeared to be a substantial gain or loss on any day, in aggregate, these positions had a comparatively small effect on our net revenues.

In 2007, total net revenues from residential mortgage-related products, both longs and shorts together, were less than $500 million, approximately 1 percent of Goldman Sachs' overall net revenues. And in 2007 and 2008 combined, our net revenues in this area were actually negative.

For Goldman Sachs, weathering the mortgage market meltdown had nothing to do with prescience or betting on or against anything. More mundanely, it had everything to do with systematically marking our positions to market, paying attention to what those marks were telling us, and maintaining a disciplined approach to risk management.

This explanation is actually pretty clear, but it is doubtful that any of the Senators understood it.

5) While not a single Senator distinguished himself, the most embarrassing was Carl Levin. He repeatedly misread emails and failed to understand the economics of Goldman's transactions. This exchange was typical:

LEVIN: Now, on October 4, 2007, exhibit 46, you wrote the SEC, page three at the bottom. You say that, "It's important to note we're active traders of mortgage securities and loans and, with any of the financial instruments we trade, at any point in time, we may choose to take a directional view of the market and will express that view through the use of mortgage securities, loans, and derivatives."

You may choose to take a directional view of the market. "Therefore, although we did have a long balance sheet exposure" -- long balance sheet exposure -- "to subprime securities in the past three years, albeit small, our net risk position was variously either long or short pending on the changing view of the market." You had a changing view of the market.

For example, now this is the example of choosing to take a directional view of the market. "During most of 2007, we maintained a net short subprime position and therefore stood the benefit from declining prices in the mortgage market." Was that true when you said it?

VINIAR: Absolutely and totally consistent what I said to you before.

LEVIN: All right.

VINIAR: We were largely short across 2007.

Levin and other Senators seemed to think that there was something "evil" about taking a short position--that all investors were somehow required to try to keep the housing bubble going. This is analogous to knowing how to add, but not how to subtract. Actually, of course, Goldman was entirely correct when it shorted securities that were based on rising home prices. A reader who has far more expertise in this area than I do writes:

If there had been easier and earlier shorting....that would have been a market signal possibly producing moderation in the pricing and a softer landing...one of the roles and social benefits of short selling....it lets market pricing more fully reflect views of asset value and puts downward pressure on pricing....in a bubble....that's what you want...some balance to tame irrational exuberance....

These people are either ignorant or dangerous.....

Or, more likely, both.

6) It didn't appear that a single Senator understands what is involved in making a market in a security.

7) News coverage has focused largely on Sen. Levin's repeated quotation of a Goldman email that described a deal that Goldman was involved in as "shitty." Levin's repeated implication was that Goldman wrongfully foisted a "s****y" deal off on its customers. Liberals never seem to wonder whether it is really a great business strategy to sell s****y deals to one's clients. I've invested in any number of deals that have gone bad, but I've never thought that my investment advisers were happy about it.

I can't be sure because I haven't seen the entire email chain, but I think the Goldman employee in question wasn't saying that Goldman sold a s****y deal to its clients, but rather that the transaction had turned out to be s****y for Goldman. Here is the relevant exchange:

LEVIN: OK. Now, before you sold all that stuff that we just described in 166, $600 million of Timberwolf securities is what you sold, before you sold them, this is what your sales team were telling to each other. Got it, 105?

SPARKS: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

LEVIN: Look what your sales team was saying about Timberwolf. "Boy, that Timberwolf was one shitty deal."

(LAUGHTER)

SPARKS: Mister...

LEVIN: They sold that "shitty deal." ...

SPARKS: Some context might be helpful.

LEVIN: Context, let me tell you, the context is mighty clear. June 22 is the date of this e-mail. "Boy, that Timberwolf was one shitty deal." How much of that "shitty deal" did you sell to your clients after June 22, 2007?

SPARKS: Mr. Chairman, I don't know the answer to that. But the price would have reflected levels that they wanted to invest...

LEVIN: Oh, of course.

SPARKS: ... at that time.

LEVIN: But they don't know it's a -- you didn't tell them you thought it was a shitty deal.

SPARKS: Well, I didn't say that.

LEVIN: No. Who did? Your people, internally. You knew it was a shitty deal, and that's what your...

SPARKS: And again, I...

LEVIN: ... e-mail showed.

SPARKS: I think the context, the message that I took from the e-mail from Mr. Montag, was that my performance on that deal wasn't good, and, I think, the fact that we had lost money related to that wasn't good.

LEVIN: How about the fact that you sold hundreds of millions of that deal after your people knew it was a shitty deal? Does that bother you at all, you sold the customers something?

SPARKS: I don't recall selling hundreds of millions of that deal after that.

8) I'm not a particular fan of either Goldman Sachs or Congress, but today's hearing confirms that, given a choice, I'd rather have Goldman Sachs regulating Congress than Congress regulating Goldman Sachs. Goldman's employees are much smarter, considerably more honest, and far more likely to have my interests at heart.

Chris Christie vs. the Teachers' Unions

in the Garden State


Gov. Christie - the Non-Crist

Overtaxed New Jersey voters sent a clear message in yesterday's voting on 479 public school budgets: Enough is enough. A stunning 54% of the budgets went down to defeat, the most since the recession year of 1976. The results have clear implications for a bitter power struggle between New Jersey GOP Governor Chris Christie and the state's powerful 200,000-member New Jersey Education Association.

With turnout up significantly, voters were clearly responding to Governor Christie's call for voters to reject budgets in districts where teachers have not agreed to a plan of "shared sacrifice" proposed by the governor. Given the state's distress, he asked for a one-year wage freeze and teachers to contribute at least 1.5% of their salaries toward their own health benefits. The governor said the cuts were necessary in the face of a massive $11 billion budget gap.

But local school districts have balked at any changes, even though New Jersey has the fourth-highest teacher salaries in the nation. More than 80% of school budgets put before voters instead demanded property tax increases on homeowners at a time when many families are financially strapped. Few of the budgets reflected any of the shared sacrifice the governor asked for. Only 20 of the state's nearly 600 districts have so far implemented a pay freeze on teacher salaries.

In a recent visit to the Wall Street Journal, Governor Christie said he recognizes the political peril he faces because of the tough stands he's taking. "Lots of folks want me to fail so they can go back to budgets as usual," he said. "I'm here to say that's no longer possible and it's time to make tough decisions."

It looks as if New Jersey voters are both watching his back and demanding more accountability from one of the most expensive public education systems in the country.

-- John Fund

How Goes the Senate Fundraising?

Bad Time Charlie

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, flailing in his Senate primary against Marco Rubio, yesterday appeared to lay the groundwork for an independent run. His veto of a sweeping conservative education reform was a public poke in the eye to the Republican Party he claims to want to represent this fall, and is already losing him his last GOP support.

Crist campaign chairman, former Sen. Connie Mack, was so bitter over Mr. Crist's veto of a bill that would have made it easier to fire bad teachers, he quit the campaign. In a terse note, he informed Mr. Crist that his veto was "unsupportable and wrong," noting that it "undermines our education system in Florida and the principles for which I have always stood." The resignation loses Mr. Crist one his most respected backers.

Mr. Crist's decision to cave to teachers unions also earned him a stinging rebuke from former Gov. Jeb Bush, who supported the measure. "By taking this action, Gov. Crist has jeopardized the ability of Florida to build on the progress of the last decade," he said in a statement. Mr. Bush, who had so far kindly refrained from taking sides in the primary, may well now be moved to come out in favor of Mr. Rubio.

The question is whether Mr. Crist cares. Mr. Rubio is now beating him by double digits in the polls for the GOP primary and has raised three times as much money as Mr. Crist in the first quarter. A recent Quinnipiac poll suggested Mr. Crist had a better shot running as an independent in the general election against Mr. Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meeks. Many therefore viewed yesterday's veto as little more than an opportunistic way for Mr. Crist to break with his party, with an eye to an outside run.

Less certain is whether that veto actually helps him as an independent. The governor's office made a big deal out of the number of comments that had poured in, and claimed the vast majority were opposed to the bill. Then again, the teachers unions had mobilized most of that response. The Florida electorate as a whole has been generally supportive of reform, one reason Mr. Bush was a popular governor. The perception that Mr. Crist's veto was nothing but political maneuvering, combined with a possible party switch, can't sit well with an electorate looking for strong leadership. We may be watching a political career go down in flames.

-- Kim Strassel

Palin Hits a Gold Mine

Palin, Inc.

No one knows if Sarah Palin is running for president in 2012, but we do know her decision to resign as governor of Alaska has brought her a bonanza of riches she couldn't have tapped if she had remained in her $125,000-a-year government job.

ABC News estimates that since she left the governor's office just eight short months ago, Ms. Palin has brought in at least 100 times her old annual salary -- or a minimum of $12 million. Her best-selling book, "Going Rogue," was sold to Harper Collins for an estimated $7 million, her deal with Fox News is said to be worth up to $2 million, and she will make about $250,000 an episode for an eight-part Learning Channel show on the culture and sights of Alaska.

Then there are the paid speaking engagements. While Ms. Palin does many events for free or donates the proceeds to charity, she's still hauling in several six-figure fees for speeches to groups ranging from economic conferences to university gatherings. Her clients have included the Bowling Proprietors Association of America, the Complete Woman Expo, the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, and the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference. Tomorrow, she will cross the border into Canada to speak for an estimated $200,000 at a fundraising dinner for a cancer center and hospital near Toronto. Tickets, priced at $200 each, have sold out.

At the same time, Ms. Palin's political action committee is raising decent but unspectacular amounts. SarahPAC raised $400,000 in the first quarter of this year, a haul smaller than similar PACs run by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty ($566,000) and Mitt Romney ($1.45 million). Both men are likely candidates for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

All in all, the available evidence is that Ms. Palin's Excellent Adventure Tour is bringing in too much fun and profit for her to consider giving it up as early as next year to run for president. At age 46, she has the luxury of securing her financial future, repairing cracks in her credibility from the 2008 campaign and waiting for another year to run for president. If I had to bet, she'll still be running for the gold in 2012 rather than the presidential brass ring.

-- John Fund

Jennifer Rubin on Obama's Foreign Policy

Spinning Obama’s Foreign-Policy Flops

Earlier this month, Jackson Diehl detailed Obama’s lack of success in forging productive relationships with foreign leaders. Now Obama’s dutiful flacks and media handmaidens take to the front page of Diehl’s paper to explain Obama was merely making use of his “charisma.” Now he is getting around to those relationships. There is this jaw-dropping bit of spin:

The change from a year ago is stark. In his widely broadcast address in Cairo last June, Obama called Israeli settlements in the occupied territories “illegitimate.” By contrast, he met last week at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for two hours, urging him privately to freeze Jewish settlement construction.

What relationship is Obama making use of there? If this is Obama’s idea of a forging bonds with foreign leaders (condemning his country, reading the prime minister the riot act, twice snubbing Netanyahu during his White House visits), our foreign-policy apparatus surely is guilty of gross malfeasance. Then the blind quotes are trotted out to — surprise, surprise — ding George W. Bush and explain how Obama’s newfound personal diplomacy is vastly superior to his predecessor’s:

“Obama is not the sort of guy who looks for a best buddy, and that’s very different than Bush,” said a European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about perceptions of U.S. leaders abroad. “Sometimes being too personal is not a good thing. You can make mistakes.”

No, Obama is the sort of guy who returns the Winston Churchill bust, gives Gordon Brown and the Queen of England cheap-o gifts, bows to dictators, and slams the elected prime minister of Israel. Completely different. But even the Washington Post must concede that Obama has not forged really any productive relationships with world leaders:

Obama, who was an Illinois state senator just four years before he was elected president, knew few world leaders upon taking office. Since then, he has developed mostly arm’s-length relationships with fellow heads of state, including many from developing countries that previous presidents largely ignored or shunned to protect U.S. relationships with more traditional allies.

Let’s get real — Obama has not really used his charisma to promote anything but himself:

Republican critics say the approach has unsettled the United States’ best friends, and failed more than succeeded in promoting American interests on some of the most far-reaching foreign policy challenges of the day.

Obama’s direct appeal to the people of China and Iran[ Did we miss this? Was he championing democracy at some point?], for example, has produced little change in the attitude of their governments, showing the limits of a bottom-up approach when it comes to dealing with authoritarian countries. Middle East peace talks remain moribund after the administration’s so-far-unsuccessful attempts to end Israeli settlement construction or to persuade Arab governments to make even token diplomatic gestures toward the Jewish state.

As Simon Serfaty of theCenter for Strategic and International Studies notes, “He is beginning to face a crisis of efficacy.” In other words, despite all the reverential treatment by liberal elites, Obama has yet to develop effective ties with allies or used public diplomacy to further American interests. His infatuation with dictatorial regimes, his embrace of multilateralism, and his willingness to kick allies (e.g., Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Britain, Honduras) in the shins have left America more isolated and rogue states more emboldened than ever before. An assessment from Der Spiegel put it this way, recalling Obama’s Cairo speech (which the Obami still laud as an achievement of some sort):

The applause for Obama’s Cairo speech died away in the vast expanses of the Arabian Desert long ago. “He says all the right things, but implementation is exactly the way it has always been,” says Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.

Obama’s failure in the Middle East is but one example of his weakness, though a particularly drastic and vivid one. The president, widely celebrated when he took office, cannot claim to have achieved sweeping successes in any area. When he began his term more than a year ago, he came across as an ambitious developer who had every intention of completing multiple projects at once. But after a year, none of those projects has even progressed beyond the early construction phase. And in some cases, the sites are nothing but deep excavations. … Obama can hardly count on gaining the support of allies, partly because he doesn’t pay much attention to them. The American president doesn’t have a single strong ally among European heads of state

Perhaps less time spent crafting stories for the Post and more time working on a viable foreign policy built on American interests rather than Obama’s ego would be in order.